


Psychological Evaluation

by Medeafic



Series: Captain Spanky Series [4]
Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Biting, Caning, D/s, M/M, Sado-Masochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-07
Updated: 2011-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:41:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medeafic/pseuds/Medeafic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris wants it and has been scouring the internet for information; Zach's holding back because they agreed to take it slow.  Things don't always run smooth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psychological Evaluation

Now that he and Zach are fucking – and even in the privacy of his own mind Chris doesn’t go anywhere near the word “relationship”, not yet – he’s given himself permission to check out other guys as well.  He never even thought about it before, and he feels exhilarated to find that he has a _type_.  Dark eyed, strong featured; he prefers a long-limbed, lanky frame.  Strong hands and large, square teeth when they smile.  The fact that this very closely describes Zachary is something he shrugs off.

Hollywood has suddenly become doubly interesting, although gay culture itself is still a mystery to him.  There are some things he just doesn’t _get_ , and Zach has given up trying to explain it to him. 

“Face it, Pine,” he laughs.  “You’re just never going to be a gay boy.”

But Chris is surer every day that he’s not straight, either. 

He’s happy to stay in a cocoon with Zach for now, working things out.  His on-again, off-again relationship with Olivia is probably-definitely off this time, despite threatening calls from his publicist about Being Seen and Power Couples.  Chris thinks his publicist is delusional.  The last time they decided to take a break, Olivia couldn’t even muster the effort to pretend it was difficult, although the tabloids spun it a different way.

He does miss her.  She was fun to be around.  But Zach is more fun.

  
*******

  
They have a few missteps very early on, before they establish more definite boundaries and before Chris is really used to things.  They agreed to take it slow, but Chris is starting to think that the polar ice caps will completely melt before Zach takes him to bed again. 

“So what toys do you have?” Chris asks, brandishing a pen over his notebook.

“Toys?” Zach asks.  He’s trying to perfect his riff on _Rock Band_.

It’s been two days since Chris asked his twenty questions and Zach jacked him off, and Chris can’t think about anything else.  But they mutually agreed to take things slow.  So Saturday night is devoted instead to what Zach calls ‘hang out time’, mostly consisting of Zach showing off on the Wii.

 “Yeah,” Chris says.  “Sex toys.  Like whips, or...things.  Manacles?  Clamps?”

Zach misses a complex chord and swears.  “I don’t know, man, can you hang on –”

“I just want to make a mental note,” Chris says encouragingly.

“You’re clearly making an _actual_ note,” Zach points out. 

Chris puts down his pen.  “I thought it would be a good starting point.  For talking about stuff.”

“You don’t have to have a starting point to talk to me.  Just – talk.”  Zach puts down the Wii guitar and waits expectantly.

“Oh,” Chris says.  “Okay.  I just wondered what stuff you had.  If there was anything I should bring next time.  On the internet, they said it might be a nice gesture to bring something.  Like a house-warming gift.”

Zach presses his lips together as though he’s trying to keep his words in check.  Eventually he says, “I have too many already.  Besides, they’re just props.”

Chris doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he just shrugs.  “Okay.  Well, I was just trying to help.”

Later, Chris asks if Zach wants to collar him.  Zach chokes on his drink.

“ _What_?” he asks, after he’s finished coughing beer out of his windpipe.

“Collar me,” Chris says.  “I’ve been reading about it.  It’s when –”

"I  _know_ what it is."  Zach looks almost comically horrified.  “Chris, seriously.  Stop.  Please.”

“But I thought –”

“Oh my God.  No.  Stop.”  Zach coughs again.  “You’re going to kill me one of these days,” he says.

“Plenty of people do it,” Chris protests.  “I’ve read about it on –”

“If you say ‘the internet’, I’m going to leave,” Zach warns.  “I’m serious.”

“Fine!” huffs Chris.  “I was just trying to help.”

Zach refuses to stay over that night, citing Noah and Harold as concerns.

  
*******

  
“I’ve filled in my checklist,” Chris announces the next afternoon.  He’s come over to Zach’s house this time.  He slaps down a five page document in front of Zach, who is flicking through a new script.

“Your what?” Zach asks, distracted.

“My kink checklist,” Chris says.  “Stuff I want to try.  You’re supposed to do one too, and then we match them up, and –”

Zach puts down his script and looks at Chris.

“Because on the internet, they said –”

Zach’s eyebrows draw together dangerously. 

“Because it’s useful,” Chris amends. 

“I thought we talked about this before.  It’s old fashioned, but more effective to actually communicate with each other than to tick boxes and label things.”

“I don’t know why you’re being so resistant,” Chris grumbles.  “I was just trying to help.”

“Christopher,” Zach says shortly.  He stops, squeezes the bridge of his nose as though he’s getting a stress headache.  “Look,” he begins again, “the whole point of playing with sadomasochism is the _playing_ part.  It shouldn’t be _work_.  I feel like you’re giving me pop quizzes and exams.  And besides that, we agreed we’d take things slow.”

“Yeah, slow, but not evolution-of-the-species slow,” Chris snaps.  He slumps dejectedly on the sofa next to Zach.

“God, you’re so demanding,” Zach says, but his tone is mild.  “I just thought we should get used to each other before we start in with the circus animals, or whatever you’ve ticked off in there.”

“But it’s been _three whole days_ now,” Chris whines.  He knows he’s whining.  He doesn’t want to whine, but he can’t help it.  He’s too used to women simply falling at his feet to know how to cope with Zach’s approach.  Zach, who is neither a woman nor falling at his feet. 

“Please don’t whine.”

“Does it make you want to punish me?” Chris asks, giving a wicked grin.

“Does whining turn _you_ on?” Zach shoots back.

“I just thought it might give you an excuse,” Chris sighs, slumping again.  “I was –”

“Just trying to help.  I know.”  Zach lets his hand wander across the sofa and slips his fingers into Chris’s.  “I don’t need an excuse,” he says.  “Don’t you get it?”  Chris turns his head to look into those dark eyes.  “You don’t have to be bad,” Zach grins, “to make me wanna hurt you.”  He squeezes his fingers.  “But we agreed to go slow.  So I’m going slow.”

Chris wants to kiss him more than anything, but he’s still uncertain about Zach’s personal boundaries.  They have barely even touched since last time.  “Um,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Do I get to kiss you when I want to, or do I have to ask first every time?”

Zach laughs.  “Whenever you want.  If I want you asking permission, you’ll know it.”

Chris moves over on the couch and lowers his head to kiss Zach.  He relaxes, thinking, _It’s not so different from kissing girls_.  Unconsciously, he moves his body over Zach, the way he does with women.  Kisses harder.  Pushes Zach back into the couch pillows.

Zach grabs him by the hair and pulls him down onto the couch, rolling on top of him.  They stop kissing.

“Sorry,” Zach mutters.  “Kind of a reflex.”

“It’s okay,” Chris says.  “I get it.”  He squirms to find a more comfortable position, squeezes Zach’s upper arm in what is supposed to be a conciliatory gesture.  Zach’s eyes go hard and bright.

“Oh, fuck,” he whispers.  “You’re kind of hitting my buttons right now.  I think accidentally.  We should probably –”

But Chris doesn’t let him finish the sentence, because he suspects it will lead to them both sitting back upright and not touching anymore.  He kisses Zach again and grips his hand on his shoulder.  Zach’s muscles are hard and taut under his fingers. 

The kinkiest thing Chris has done with a woman was a blindfold and feathers, and it was _nothing_ like this…whatever this is, with Zach.  It was playful, silly, nothing serious.  Nothing intense.  No real issues of control.  Besides, Chris has always felt in control in relationships, because he’s always been bigger.  Physically stronger.  Less emotionally available.  With Zach, though, that is not the case.

Zach is holding him down, by the shoulders, into the couch seat.  Chris can barely move underneath him.  He only has one hand free, which is clutching back at Zach’s immovable shoulder.

“Wait,” he says into Zach’s mouth.  “Please.  Wait.”

Zach pulls back, turning his head away from Chris and breathing hard.  He has his eyes closed.  “Sorry,” he says again. 

“No – it’s not – I just,” Chris tries to explain.  Zach lifts himself up and walks into the kitchen.  Chris hears him get a bottle of water from the fridge.  He sits up himself, rubbing his hands over his mouth and eyes, shagging through his hair.

He follows Zach to the kitchen.  Zach has already drunk half the bottle.  He smiles at Chris, but it’s not his usual easy smile.

“I’m sorry, man,” he offers.  “I didn’t mean to jump you.”

“No, it’s me,” Chris says.  “Stop apologizing.  I just felt weird for a second.”

Zach contemplates his bottle.  “We can always go back to being just friends,” he tells it.  “No harm, no foul.”

“I don’t want to,” Chris says immediately.  “Can we – can we just take that off the table, please?  I don’t want to be just friends.”  He realizes how it sounds only after it comes out of his mouth, but Zach is nodding.

“Okay,” he says.  He drinks again.  “I agree,” he says.  “I think we’ve gone too far now to go back to that.”  He sounds almost forlorn.

“I know you think I’m an idiot with all my checklists and questions,” Chris says, “but I’m just trying to make sure of things.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot.  I just think it’s a bit over the top.”

“Well, but, from my research, it seems the safest thing is to negotiate everything beforehand.”

Zach comes closer to the counter, where Chris is standing.  “Everything, Pine?”

“Not _everything_ , obviously.”

“Okay,” Zach says.  “I’ll humor you.  What, exactly, do you think we need to negotiate right now?”

“Well, whether I like certain stuff.  Like whipping.  Or…anal things.”

“Have you ever been whipped?”

“No.”

“Have you ever done ‘anal things’?”  He even makes little air quotes, although he doesn’t need to.  Chris can hear it in his voice.  And it's kind of annoying.

“Not so much.”

“So how do you know whether you’ll like them or not?”

Chris says nothing.

“Are you starting to see my point?” Zach asks finally.

“But how do we make sure we both wanna do something?”

“How about this.  Before we get into anything heavy, I’ll tell you what I want to do.  For example, I’ll say, ‘Christopher, I really want to brand my initials into your ass,’ and you’ll say –”

“ _Brand_ me?” Chris gapes. 

“Yes, just like that.  And I’ll say, ‘Oh, it sounds like you might not be into that.’  See?”

Chris looks uncertain.

“I’m not going to brand you.”

“Okay.”

“It was just an example.”

“I got that.”  Chris pauses.  “Have you ever actually –”

“No.”

“Okay.  Because that would be –”

“A bit drastic,” Zach agrees.  “At least you can remove tattoos these days.”  He pulls Chris closer to him.  “Here’s the thing,” he says.  “These kind of relationships are based on trust.  And I know I have to earn that trust.  I’m not going to do anything too…”

“Drastic?” Chris asks.  He’s smiling again.

“Nothing too drastic,” Zach nods.  “And,” he gives a big sigh, “I’ll read your damn kink checklist, okay?”

Chris gives a brilliant grin.  “Okay,” he agrees.  “Will you do one too?”

Zach looks pained.  “I’ll think about it.”

It’s Chris this time who decides to go home for the night.  He has to concede that Zach had a point with taking things slow after all.  Nothing too drastic, too soon.

  
***

  
A few days later, they are both free again in the late afternoon.  When Chris comes over, Zach has just had a shower and his hair is still wet.  Noah is happy to see Chris, and Harold ignores them all in favor of a sunlit window.  Zach wants to make tea, so they stand in the kitchen together while they wait for it.

“Good shoot?” Chris asks.  Zach has been working on another short film with friends. 

Zach makes a face.  “Not really.  Took me a while to get into it properly.”

Chris is surprised.  Of all his actor friends, Zach is one of the most professional and most insistent on his process.  “Why?” he asks. 

“I had other things on my mind.  You, mostly.”  Chris feels pleased, although he knows he shouldn’t.  “I feel like I didn’t really give you a chance to finish what you wanted to say the other day,” Zach says abruptly.  “About negotiating.”

Chris shrugs.  “I agreed with what you said in the end.”

“Maybe,” Zach says dubiously.  “But that doesn’t excuse cutting you off.  I forget sometimes how different our experiences have been.”

“I guess.”

“This stuff we’re getting into – there’s a difference between reading about it and doing it, Chris.”

“I know that,” Chris says.

“How can you know?  You’ve barely done it.”

Chris is annoyed.  “Well, I'm sorry I’m so inexperienced, _Zachary_.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he sighs.  “And please don’t be so prickly.  This conversation is supposed to be to your benefit.”

Chris crosses his arms.  “Fine,” he says.  “Continue.”

“I can understand why you wanted to negotiate everything up front.  But there are some things that you just _can’t_ know about beforehand.”

“Soft and hard limits,” says Chris knowledgeably.  “Right?”

“Um,” Zach says.  “What I mean is, it doesn’t have to be as complicated as you’re making it.  We can make it simpler.  It doesn’t have to be a complex business contract.  We can just explore things.  Together.”

“Oh,” says Chris.  “So what did you have in mind?”

“Well, that brings me to my point,” Zach says.  He goes to his bedroom and comes back with something long, wrapped in gold paper and tied with a fancy black bow.  “I got this for you,” Zach says.  “Since you never shut up about it.”  He puts it down on the counter between them.

Chris hardly dares to hope.  He opens it slowly.  “Really?” he says, his face lighting up.  “A riding crop?  But you always said –”

“Never mind what I said.  You want to try it.  So we should try it.”

Chris feels so happy, which, he reflects, is a strange way to feel about being gifted a riding crop.  With which Zach intends to hit him.  But _fuck_ , he feels happy.

“But _quid pro quo_ , Christopher,” Zach warns.  “We try this, then we try my favorite.”

“Okay,” Chris laughs.  He feels so great right now, he’d probably agree to a branding.

  
*******

  
“Does this mean I finally get to find out where you keep your stuff?” Chris asks on the way to the bedroom.  He’s still holding the crop.

“Oh, Christopher,” Zach laughs.  “You poor naïf.”

“What?”

“You _total_ dork.  I thought you'd realized.”

“ _What_?”

“Why do you think I told you to sleep in _my_ room that time you stayed over?  I moved all my stuff into the spare room the week before.  Got tired of it cluttering up my closet.”

Chris stops dead.  “Goddamn!”

“And by the way,” Zach continues, coming up behind him.  “I knew exactly what you were doing that night, throwing my clothes everywhere and looking under the bed.”  He snakes an arm around Chris’s torso and pulls him back, close to his chest.  His hand rests over Chris’s heart.  Chris wonders if Zach can feel his sudden accelerated heartbeat.  “And if I did need an excuse to make you hurt, that would be it.”

Chris shivers.  “Sorry about that,” he whispers.  “I was just, uh.”

“Looking to get into trouble?” Zach suggests.  He kisses the back of Chris’s neck and propels him forward to the bedroom. 

When they get there, Chris looks around.  “Hey,” he says, surprised.  “You still haven’t fixed the wall.”  A fist sized hole is still in the wall near the doorway.  Chris feels his fingers ache at the memory.

“I left it as a reminder,” Zach says.  Chris doesn’t ask what it’s supposed to be a reminder of, because Zach is kissing the back of his neck again.

And then biting.  Not too hard at first, but then a little more.  “Ouch,” Chris says, but he is getting hard. 

“That reminds me,” Zach says.  “You still want ‘Enterprise’ as your safe word?”

Chris has to laugh at that.  “Yeah.  If you don’t think it’s dumb.”

“I think it’s fine,” Zach says.  Actually, Chris thinks, he is purring.  And rubbing his crotch insistently against Chris’s ass.  “And you understand when you need to use it?”  He takes the crop out of Chris’s hand.

“Yeah,” Chris says.  “If I want to stop.”

Zach pushes him face first against the wall, right next to the hole he made.  “And what about if you want me to slow down?” he asks.

“Um,” says Chris.  He’s finding it hard to concentrate.  Zach is grinding his hard cock up against his ass, and has slipped a hand down under Chris’s waistband.  “What?”

“If you want me to slow down, but not stop,” Zach says, nipping at his ear.  “What are you going to say then?”

Chris has not considered this.  “Don’t know,” he says.  “What do you suggest?”

“How about you tell me things are getting a bit drastic,” Zach says.  Chris can feel his lips smiling against his shoulder.

“Okay,” Chris says.  “And just so we’re clear – no fucking branding.”

Zach laughs into the back of his neck.  “Okay, no sizzling flesh.  Now stop thinking, Christopher.  That’s the point.  Stop.  Thinking.”  Both words are emphasized with a firm bite to Chris’s shoulders through his shirt.  “And take your clothes off.  Go.”  Zach releases him.

Chris strips.  He’s getting better at it, but he still feels awkward when Zach stays clothed.  He doesn’t have to close his eyes, though, as Zach leaves him standing there so he can look him over.

“So,” Zach says eventually.  “How many strikes do you want?”

“You’re letting me choose?”  Chris is surprised.

“Sure, why not?” Zach says.  “And then I get to choose how many for the cane.”  He gives a small smile, quirking just one corner of his mouth.

 _Oh, fuck_ , Chris thinks.  Then he notices the cane itself, leaning against the nightstand.  It's longer and thicker than the crop, tapering slightly at the tip.  _Oh holy fuck_ , he thinks again.

“Six?” he asks.  He doesn’t want to look scared, but he doesn’t want to ask for more than he can handle, but he doesn’t _know_ what he can handle, and goddamn him, Zachary Quinto is right about practical experience.

“Six?” Zach repeats, raising an eyebrow.  “Okay, then.”

“Is – is that too much?” Chris asks, feeling panicky.

Zach shrugs.  “You tell me.”

“But I don’t know!”

“Oh, no!” Zach lilts mockingly.  “That’s a shame.”

“ _You_ said it doesn’t hurt as much as a cane,” Chris says accusingly.

“I did.”  Zach moves towards him now and traces his fingers over Chris’s dick, encouraging it.

Chris tries to keep his mind on the point.  “How many times,” he begins, but stops and licks his lips.  They feel dry.  “Cane,” he says.

“If you’re trying to ask how many times I’m going to hit you with the cane,” Zach says, taking pity on him, “then I was thinking…why not another six.  Six seems like a good number.”

 _But is it_? Chris thinks frantically.  He tries to add up the potential pain – if cane is _x_ then crop is _x_ minus a bit, times six strokes each, divided by…

“Stop thinking,” Zach reminds him.  He starts working Chris’s cock in earnest, the friction causing just a small amount of pain.  “Just feel, right now.  How does it feel?”

“Good!” Chris gasps. 

“So erudite,” Zach murmurs sarcastically.  “I would like you to stand against the wall.  Over there.  Fold your arms and rest your head on them.  And keep them like that, because otherwise they’re just going to get in the way.”

Chris returns to his position by the hole in the wall. 

“I’m going to start,” Zach tells him.  “And just so you know,” he adds, “I’m considering this payback for breaking my wall.”  His voice is filled with laughter.

Chris lifts his head back from his arms in surprise, but Zach is already swinging, and so catches him off-guard.

It lands; Chris jerks.  It’s painful, but not unbearable.  Hurts more than the spanking, which seems so long ago now.  For a second time, he hears swish of the rod through the air and the slap of the leather tag, the sting in the tail.  Zach is practiced at placement, and waits for Chris to recover in between strokes.  In combination, these tactics make each strike painful but good, really good. 

 _Nothing too drastic_ , Chris thinks.  He’s not surprised to find that his dick is getting hard, butting into the wall.  But by the sixth stroke, Chris is clenching his fists, avoiding the temptation to cover his ass.  He’s left smears of pre-come across the wall.  It's still so strange to him to realize that this turns him on.

When it’s over, Zach pulls his hair and speaks into his ear.  “I told you,” he said.  “Riding crops are a piece of cake.”  He rubs his hand over Chris’s tender flesh, making him wince.  “Although I do like that you can take a lot of strokes with it,” he concedes.  “That has possibilities.  What do you think?”

Chris gasps as Zach moves his hand around to check his cock.  “Well,” Zach says, “I guess it’s pretty obvious what you think.” 

“I like it,” Chris chokes out.

“Good boy,” Zach says.  “And now you can say sorry for punching a hole in my wall.”

“I already did when it happened,” Chris says mutinously.  But when Zach gives his dick a warning tug, he gives in.  “I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, you will be,” Zach says.  “My turn.”  He throws the crop on to the bed and grabs the cane instead.  “You wanna go ahead and clean up that other mess you made on my wall?” he says casually over his shoulder. 

Chris is not sure he really means what he’s saying.  He looks backwards, uncertainly.  Catches Zach’s eyes.  _Yeah.  He means it_ , he thinks.  Zach makes a few practice whips on the bed with the cane and then looks at Chris, raising his eyebrow.  Chris gets the message loud and clear, and drops to his knees.  Cleans the wall of his fluids with his own tongue.

“You are _such_ a good boy when you want to be,” Zach murmurs.  He’s twisting the cane in his fingers, watching Chris.  “That’s enough.  Stand up, like before.”

Chris does as he’s asked.  He is nervous.  The crop did hurt, but in a nice way.  If Zach thinks the cane is worse, Chris isn’t sure if he’ll be able to take it.

The first stroke has him cursing immediately.  He steps away from the wall, biting into one hand while the other clutches his ass.  “You didn’t hit that fucking hard with the fucking crop!” he snaps at Zach.  But Zach is only amused.

“My game, my rules,” he points out.  “So are you going to let me play, or are you taking your balls and going home?”

“Fuck you,” Chris says.  He resumes his position.  “Just not so fucking hard this – _Fuck_!”  Chris arches back in agony.

“You really have a mouth on you, Christopher,” Zach says.  “But I’m not hearing any safe words.”

Chris clenches his fists so hard that he feels his fingernails gouge the skin of his palms.  The next stroke is at an angle, and Chris feels the tip of that goddamn cane dig into the sensitive flesh of his crack.  He howls, moves away again.

“Okay, _fuck_ ,” he breathes finally, when his nerve endings have calmed.  “That is _seriously_ not a good hurt,” he tells Zach.

“Not supposed to be, right now,” Zach says.  “I’ll tell you what.  Just one more.  That will be four.  I think I’ll have proved my point then.” 

Chris looks at Zach, and thinks, _Why exactly am I doing this?_   But it’s his dick, throbbing, that holds the answer.  _Okay, fine, we’ll do it your way for now_ , Chris tells it.  “One more,” he says.

“One more,” Zach promises. 

“Okay,” he says, and moves back to the wall.  This stroke is harder than all the others, angled again, excruciating.  Chris falls forward into the wall this time, his knees buckling.  His mind has gone strangely blank.  But Zach is suddenly there to catch him.

“Oh, you are so brave,” he breathes into Chris’s ear.  “Thank you.  That was a privilege to watch.”  He takes Chris to the bed, lies him down on his back.  Chris clenches his teeth as his flesh hits the cloth, but it's cool and soothing underneath.  Then Zach is pulling off his own clothes.  “You look so good when you hurt,” he’s saying.  Zach is on top of him, rubbing his cock insistently up against Chris’s. 

“What do I look like?” Chris asks.  He wants to touch, but Zach falls forward, grabbing his wrists.  He holds them there, next to Chris’s face.

“Ecstatic,” Zach says.  “Like the Sufis.  I can see your mind dancing through the pain.”

And it’s all over for Chris, basically.  He feels Zach’s hot breath on his face; Zach’s hand momentarily on his cock, rubbing it into his own, and that’s all it takes.  He comes almost unexpectedly, in long waves.  Zach kisses him ferociously while he does.

Later, after they've both come down and Zach has rubbed Chris's skin over with some kind of lotion, Chris finally gets the strength to visit the bathroom.  He grabs Zach’s shaving mirror to inspect his own ass in the reflection over the sink. 

That’s when he realizes what Zach has done.  On his ass, aside from the squares of the riding crop tip, and the faint marks from its rod, are two bright red, raised Zs.  One on each cheek.  Chris can barely understand how Zach managed to do it with only four strokes, but there it is.  Two horizontal marks stretch right across his ass, one high and one low, broken by his crack.  The diagonals are a little less clear, but bruised black and purple where the tip of the cane contacted. 

“You mother _fucker_ ,” Chris swears slowly.  But he has to grin.  He comes back out to find Zach curled up in bed, looking sleepy.

"Why do I have two Zs on my ass?" he asks.

Zach actually giggles.  "Sorry, man.  I kind of had to after the branding conversation.  But don't worry, it's not permanent."

Chris shoves him over and slips in to the bed next to him, face down.  His ass is still throbbing slightly.  He rests his head on his folded arms and looks at Zach.

"You have a weird sense of humor," he says.  "As long as you don't try to _actually_ brand me, though, that's okay."

"I promise," Zach says, smiling.  "It's just, my mother always taught me to write my name on my property.  So it doesn't get lost."

Chris rolls his eyes.  "Fuck you, Quinto," he says, but feels his dick stirring nonetheless.  "And why haven't you got the damn wall fixed yet?  I told you I'd pay for it."

Zach turns on his side to face him, wraps an arm around his shoulders.  "I just like it there," he says.

"Did you really want payback?"

"No.  But you seemed concerned that I needed a reason to make you suffer."

Chris considers that.  "You're always thinking more about what I want," he says.

"I have to."  Zach's face is serious now.  "I have to be careful about what you want.  I don't want to hurt you for real.  Well, I do, obviously.  But not some kind of permanent problem."  He rolls onto his back again, tucks his hands under his head and looks at the ceiling.  "And I don't want to hurt your psyche either."

Chris reaches out to hold Zach's fingers under the pillow.  "My psyche, huh?"  He closes his eyes, feeling exhausted.  "Maybe you should just let me worry about that."  

Zach doesn't get a chance to answer, though, before Chris falls asleep.


End file.
